


Isn’t It Delicate?

by LLReid



Category: Reigning Passions (Visual Novel)
Genre: Altadellys, Canon LGBTQ Character, Date Night, F/F, Fluff and Mush, LGBTQ Female Character, Lysende, Royalty, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24870040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Fic inspired by Emma Heesters cover of ‘Delicate’~~~~~Technically speaking, anyone else would receive nothing short of a life sentence if they’d to drag Her Majesty into the secret passageways that were woven throughout the palace, and then outside through the dungeons — and that was if Ruelle didn’t fatally stab them before Lyrei could pass the sentence. But it was far from the first time Xenia had whisked her away from court without any prior warning or co-ordination with the armed soldiers who had become her shadow.Kidnapping the Queen for the evening might’ve been a fools errand; she couldn’t guarantee her safety, nor could she predict the pandemonium that would ensue had her retainers to figure out she wasn’t locked in her study; but it was necessary. Every girl thought about living in a palace. Few ever pondered living in a cage and crowns far too often did queer things to the heads beneath them, so Xenia had made it her personal mission to preserve as much of Lyrei’s sanity as possible until her final breath, or for however long she reigned... whichever came first.
Relationships: Xenia of the Autumn/Lyrei Ararieth, Xenia/Main Character (Reigning Passions)
Kudos: 42





	Isn’t It Delicate?

“Come with me.”

“What, I—“

“My beautiful queen. Your entire court is staring at you, and I can't blame them,” Xenia murmured. “But I must steal you away. There is something I must discuss with you immediately.”

They were, too. People never stopped gaping at their beautiful, young sovereign. The queen turned to look. Her glance swept through the crowd of courtiers in the ornate hallway like a reaping sickle through grain. Mouths slammed shut on every side as Xenia lead her away and Lyrei waved off her security. There was a scuffling sound as the people in the back shifted, bowing deeply at the waist as they passed. The queen looked back at the spy, who was broadly smiling.

“One would assume that kidnapping the monarch would be a far more difficult endeavour,” Xenia sighed, an amused smirk playing at the corners of her mouth as she wrapped the Queen up in a hooded cloak of red velvet. “You ought to have a word with your security detail, Lyzzie. If kidnapping you from right in front of their faces is this easy, they must be intolerably stupid.”

Lyrei huffed in amusement. “It’s not my fault you’re sneakier than Ruelle, Amara, and all of the Queensguard combined. In fact, it’s actually comforting to know that you’re literally the only one capable of pulling off this feat with only a few words.”

A low laugh rumbled through the Spy Mistress’ body and she gave her lover’s hand a gentle squeeze. Technically speaking, anyone else would receive nothing short of a life sentence if they’d to drag Her Majesty into the secret passageways that were woven throughout the palace, and then outside through the dungeons — and that was if Ruelle didn’t fatally stab them before Lyrei could pass the sentence. But it was far from the first time Xenia had whisked her away from court without any prior warning or co-ordination with the armed soldiers who had become her shadow.

Kidnapping the Queen for the evening might’ve been a fools errand; she couldn’t guarantee her safety, nor could she predict the pandemonium that would ensue had her retainers to figure out she wasn’t locked in her study; but it was necessary. Every girl thought about living in a palace. Few ever pondered living in a cage and crowns far too often did queer things to the heads beneath them, so Xenia had made it her personal mission to preserve as much of Lyrei’s sanity as possible until her final breath, or for however long she reigned... whichever came first.

She found the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The Queen lived in a palace heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, armed guards, all designed to ensure the she had absolute privacy. And yet a few weeks prior every newspaper in Altadellys somehow carried headlines announcing; ‘QUEEN LYREI HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED’. She was a young woman reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub across the kingdom knew the precise state of her ovaries. It was really no mystery why so many good and well meaning monarchs either went mad or became no better than common drunkards over the course of their reign. That sort of intrusion could drive a saint to the brink of insanity.

“So, where are you taking me this time?,” Lyrei prodded as Xenia pulled up the hood of her cloak, concealing her ears and her long red hair that was full of icy wind and torchlight. She was every princess, every queen, in every history book and fairytale. The cold politeness and ceremonious grace she had to embody whenever anyone else was around were worse than anything, so the fact that she was very clearly her bubbly, excitable self made the spy’s heart beat so fast that she could feel each and every beat against her ribs. “The gardens of the Spring Quarter? The Winter Temple? Oh, the bakery we love in the Autumn Quarter?”

“Patience is a virtue, Lyzzie.” The childhood nickname that Rosie had given her tumbled off her tongue smoothly. To most people, Lyrei was referred to by any number of her grand and imposing titles. To her friends, she simply went by her name whenever they were not in meetings or attending ceremonial occasions. But Xenia was the only one in the palace who was close enough to her to use the sweet moniker whenever she felt like doing so, and she adored how intimate it felt that she used it multiple times every day.

Lyrei sighed and pouted. That face was Xenia’s one weakness. The wide, glistening eyes. The rose tinted cheeks. The sheer stubbornness about her that liked to wrestle with the will of others. The courage that rose at every attempt to take the lead. It did the most unspeakable things to her. “Even before I was a Queen, my patience was far from my most defining characteristic.”

“Behave yourself.”

“Will you punish me if I don’t?,” Lyrei smirked.

“Would you like that?” 

“I— You— Xenia!”

Smirking, Xenia leaned down and took her lips with the gentlest whisper of a kiss. Lyrei smiled against her as she deepened it, kissing her slowly and as deeply as she was capable of. She could not fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundations for the fairytale romance that their relationship had blossomed into, but it felt like the very first moment she saw her, her heart was irrevocably gone. Even though she had not known Lyrei for more than a couple of spans, they’d gone through far too much that it seemed too long ago to say with any certainty. In vain, she had struggled against falling so hard, but her feelings were too big and too strong to be repressed. She was in the middle of her happily ever after long before she even knew that it had begun.

“I would like it to be known that this is the stupidest plan I have ever in my career participated in," Xenia said.

“You say that every time you sneak me out.” Lyrei giggled. “And you know I love stupid plans.”

“You say that every time I sneak you out.”

She turned on her heel, which was no easy feat in a slippery, damp tunnel. Not losing eye contact with Lyrei, she stared her down until she got to the narrow staircase that lead to a series of deeper and narrower tunnels. She lead her lover by the hand through the tight passageways that looped through her palace. Very few people were aware of their existence, save for the servants. In her experience, the servants always knew everything and she had first learned of the tunnels from them. She now knew each and every one like the back of her hand. They made her job easier, and they made sneaking the Queen out of the castle a disconcertingly simple endeavour.

Their date nights in Altadellys were always simple, as they existed in a world of such excess that the simpler, more heartfelt things in life were the most meaningful. They both enjoyed blending into the outside life for a couple of hours. It just went to show that it didn’t matter that they dressed more expensively and lived in a higher stratum of society than most people did, it did not make them less human. Like everyone else, they were born and they died. They sought for happiness in the very same way as the humblest scullery-maid or the lowest paid stable-boy wanted to be happy in their lives.

On this clear night there was set to be a meteor shower, and there was a festival commemorating the occasion held in the Winter Quarter. There’d be street food, music, and a celestial event so spectacular that no one would be paying enough attention to the alluring woman in the red cloak to figure out she was the Queen. It seemed like the perfect night out, as far as Xenia was concerned. No work. No insufferable aristocratic fools. No political emergencies. Just her and the company of a clever, well-informed woman, who had a great deal of conversation; whose company she considered to be the best company in all the world.

As they made their way to the Winter Quarter they spoke about everything and anything that came to mind, each knowing there would be no judgement, each safe in the knowledge that they could be their unfiltered selves. Xenia would never take for granted having what she said matter to someone, that addictive feeling of being heard and understood was truly like no other.

It was like they were in their own little world, oblivious to the Winter Quarter’s marble walls and the laughter of people from all over Lysende crammed into the snow covered streets. They walked on and on, without really knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to be payed to anything else.

The comforting earthy smell of glass covered night blooming gardens was carried in the chilly air, mingling with all the scents of Winter; of hot chocolate and warm peppermint, fresh snow and smoke and pine needles, the stables, hot bread baking, and the white fur of the monstrous wolves that paraded proudly at the sides of patrolling Winter soldiers.

Drifting snowflakes brushed their faces as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on their cheeks. They were stood near the center of the square, beside the statue of Lyrei that had been erected not long after her coronation. The statue was impressive, imposing, beautiful, and every inch the monument one would expect in the Queen’s honour. The black onyx was polished so smooth that it seemed to shimmer like black diamond in the light of torches lit around the square, its shadows leaping and dancing on the walls of buildings around them. No one had the slightest idea that the real Lyrei was in their midst, as Xenia had hoped, they were all far too consumed in their own lives to notice her... and the cloak had very little to do with it. Darkness was the real cloak.

“Stay close to me,” Xenia murmured. “It is one thing to kidnap the monarch from the palace and have her miss the Oscen ambassador’s cocktail party, but to lose her in a crowd is unforgivable.”

Lyrei giggled sweetly. She was sensible and very clever, but young and far too eager in almost everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. “I’m not a wandering child. You’re not going to lose me.”

“Won’t I?” She wrapped her arms around her and drew her close to her. “I distinctly remember you saying that last time—“

“You got me drunk. Very, very drunk. I can’t be held accountable for wandering off.”

She snorted. “Hazel and I looked for you until dawn. I thought I was going to have to declare a state of emergency and enlist all of my subordinates to help recover you.”

“It is not what we do, so much as why we do it,” Lyrei shrugged. “It was technically the alcohol’s doing.”

“I did tell you not to mix your drinks.”

“Hazel dared me. I may be a fool, but I’m no coward.”

Xenia didn’t even attempt to conceal her amusement. This was a woman who could not be persuaded into doing what she knew was wrong, nor would she ever be tricked into it. She had never met a man she didn’t dare mock, and she frequently silenced men more than twice her size and age with a single arch of an eyebrow. She didn’t indulge the old Lords who saw no differences between a woman who was a queen and one who was a seamstress, despite knowing they would recognise all the differences in the world between a king and a farmer. One word or a wave of her hand could silence a person forever, send a nation to war, upend the entire world. She was such a formidable politician that foreign kingdoms trembled at the mention of her name, and her peers knew better than to underestimate her. She may have looked like a demure young woman, but she was really more like a dragon in human form. No one would believe her if she’d to tell them that the great Queen Lyrei of Lysende had the alcohol tolerance of an infant and made the worst life choices with even a drop of ale in her system. 

“Silly girl,” she muttered. She experienced the happiest moment of her life when Lyrei took her in her arms and pressed her to her heart; when she even thought of such a moment her heart beat madly and she wanted to hug her to death. “My silly girl...”

Lyrei’s cheeks flushed scarlet. The curves of that smile had become the waves in the ocean of her heart. “Xenia...”

“Lyzzie,” she breathed, resting her brow against hers beneath her red velvet hood. She tightened her arms around her and kissed her under the starlit sky, and she didn’t care a bit that they were in the sight of many. In this hour, with the woman she loved in her arms, it was impossible to believe that any darkness in the world would ever be able to endure. “I am unspeakably glad you are here with me.”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” Lyrei murmured. “Though, is it weird that the council decided to have Hazel make me into a statue? Is it weirder that we’re standing next to it?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Xenia chuckled, pressing a kiss atop her hood. She turned to glance at the onyx effigy and could see the rippling deep within the little pieces of steel that the sword she was holding had been crafted from, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Xenia had an eye for fine art, and she could not deny that the sculpture was particularly beautiful. It would one day be a legacy from the legendary reign of Queen Lyrei, and the likeness was remarkable. Even looking at it one could see that there was something familiar but strange about her. Tough and delicate and magical and real all at once.

She couldn’t help but think about the statue that would be erected next to hers, had they to eventually marry — but unlike the rest of the bumbling suitors who actively pursued her, Xenia wouldn’t simply marry Lyrei to become a Queen. She would become a Queen because she wanted to marry her.

“It just seems... silly. Royalty pollutes people’s minds. Good, honest people start bowing and bobbing just because someone’s ancestors were a bunch of bigger murdering bastards than theirs were. It’s maddening.”

“I—“

“People say the statue is about honour, but it isn't my honour. It’s the public perception of my honour. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake true honour for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perceptions of fools... all it takes is a monument like this one and suddenly I’m a living god.”

“In the eyes of the masses, that’s exactly what you are,” she pointed out. “You are above every law, answerable only to the gods. Some people say that the purpose of the monarchy is to assert the gods’ will on Lysende.”

Lyrei sighed. “Those who say that are the very fools I was talking about. If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me or tell me what to do. I know what they say; that I am not a philosopher, I am a sovereign. The rules that govern my behavior are not the rules for other men, and my honour, they say, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but future historians and the gods to judge.”

“And you think differently?”

“Of course I do. I just don’t think I’ve earned a monument like this yet. My bloodline alone is not enough to guarantee greatness. My destiny was known before I was born and my name will be blazoned in history long after I’m dust in the ground. Infamy is temporary, celebrity is fleeting, but royalty… royalty is forever. It’s daunting, don’t you think?”

“You deserve this,” Xenia assured her. “You inherited this country when you’d only just left behind your childhood. Since then, you alone have governed it. When the old nobility told you that you couldn’t, you proved them wrong. You have fought down rebellious Lords. You’ve fought for the people of the Wilds, and they are now thriving because of your refusal to back down. You have almost been assassinated and you have suffered for your people. You do everything you can to keep this country safe and in your hands, and you retire to bed exhausted from working so hard every night. There is no one who deserves it more than you.”

“Are you telling me in your own gentle way to stop whining?"

"Yes."

"I don't feel like a hero. I feel like an idiot. A well-dressed idiot, but an idiot all the same."

"I think heroes generally do, but people believe in you and you are more than worthy of that belief.”

The Queen lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her lips. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a routine kiss between girlfriends. It was a kiss between a woman and the woman she hoped would one day be her wife, and when it was over, the Queen closed her eyes and rested her forehead in the hollow of the Spy Mistress’ shoulder, like a woman seeking respite, like a woman reaching home at the end of the day.

Xenia looked at her and tilted her head very slightly in wonder. Somehow she always seemed to forget how beautiful she was. Beneath her hood, her hair was held away from her face by the ruby and gold tiara that crossed her dark brows. Her skin was glowing and fair. She dressed as always in the most elegant gowns that would always be imitated by courtiers and commoners alike after she’d worn the designs. Looking at her, Xenia couldn’t help but smile.

She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those long years between Valerian’s passing and finding Lyrei, and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, had been the last seed of hope for her. She hadn’t known how to nurture it or if it could live until Lyrei had upended all she knew.

Lyrei saw her smile, without any hint of self-effacement or flattery or opportunism, a smile wholly unlike that of any member of her court, and she blushed.

“Look up,” Xenia whispered.

Overhead, the meteor’s tails spread across the night. They looked like stars racing across the sky, a light slash that bled above the Winter Quarter like an icy wound in the obsidian and purple sky. Looking up, she could feel the falling snow land on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of the Wilds. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams.

“Xenia, this is— I am speechless!"

"Not noticeably,” Xenia teased.

Lyrei rolled her eyes and gave her a tight squeeze. “Thank you for this.”

Xenia rested her face against the hood, her tone even and gentle when she spoke, “I enjoy showing you how ardently I admire and love you.”

“I love you, too, Xenia,” Lyrei murmured. “You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a queen to her knees.”

“Is that you propositioning me, sweet girl?,” she chuckled. She really was the only person alive who could even insinuate such a thing in Lyrei’s presence. Nobody else was brave enough to treat the queen like a person with normal desires. 

Lyrei shrugged her shoulders. “It might be.”

“How bold,” she beamed, softly kissing her lips.

“You like bold.”

“Indeed I do.”

“You’re so amazing,” the Queen mumbled. “What I am, I am by accident of birth; what you are, you are by yourself. There are and will be a million Queens; there is only one Xenia, Mistress of Spies. And I’d get on my knees for you any time you asked.”

“I don't know what kind of life we might have together," Xenia breathed, never looking away from her warm blue eyes. "But I know I would protect you with the last scrap of my soul. I know I want to be there for you, to hold you, to dance with you, to escape the palace with you, to be with you no matter where Fate takes us, because it's the sound of your heartbeat that comforts me when I drift off to sleep, and I know I— I cannot offer you much. You have the entire world at your fingertips. I'm not sure what I can offer you, but myself. Hopefully that is enough, because I love you so much, Lyzzie... and I could not bear to lose you.”

Lyrei smiled. “Be my forever?”

“Always.”

The tale of Queen Lyrei was told by royalty and vagabonds alike, nobles and peasants, hunters and farmers, the old and the young. The tale came from every corner of the world, but no matter where it was told, it was always the same story. Some said that, once upon a time, a Wildergirl became a princess, a Queen, wrapped in the protective embrace of a meddling spy. Others with more of a flare for dramatics said that she must be the spawn of a wicked queen, a worker of illusions, a girl who brought darkness across the lands and dismantled the royal houses who’d ruled Lysende for a century. Still, others said that she was blessed by the gods, and that they loved her more dearly than all others. Perhaps all of those were true, people said.

Xenia knew better, though. Most of what people knew was only rumors, of course, and made little more than a story to tell around the fire. But it was told, and would continue to be told long after this chilly night beneath a meteor streaked sky had been long forgotten. And thus they would live on, together, forever and always, never to be forgotten.

\- fin.


End file.
